Maverick Philosopher

The following arrived on Christmas Eve:

Apatheia, Ataraxia, and Holiday Spirit

I was wondering if you had any advice for those struggling to maintain their Stoic calm as Christmas approaches. Alas, I am one of those souls this year. I will not burden you with the details, but it seems the holidays also bring out many of our dear friends’ struggles with booze. To wit, a friend of nearly 20 years began a bender about a week ago that culminated this morning with his saying to me, this morning, some things that no self-respecting man could forgive in one to be labeled a friend, especially when one has had to forgive booze related outbursts several times before.

So, it seems the modifiers, not the nouns, are the functional words in phrases like “old friends” and this friendship will now be over. I have consulted Seneca on friendship and anger, and I recall Cicero’s advice, but I fear the philosophers offer little in the way of immediate comfort as I accept this loss (and also reflect on what the whiskey demons bring out in myself). I expect you must be inundated with mail this time of year, so know that I appreciate your reading this message. If you have any advice, or perhaps a reading suggestion, I’d appreciate the time you took to do so very much. Merry Christmas!

There are two main topics here, interpersonal relationships and the role of alcohol.

How you negotiate interpersonal relations depends on your psychological type.  I'm an inner-directed man in roughly David Riesman's sense, who knows what he is about and what he wants to achieve. So for me, cost-benefit analysis comes into play when I choose whom to associate with and whom to avoid.  Will contact with this person help me achieve my goals or will it hinder me? Any relationship with anyone incurs costs and provides benefits. So I calculate whether the benefits will outweigh the costs,  given my goals. To do this requires self-knowledge. So that is where you must start. Know thyself! But it also requires knowledge of the people you will be associating with.   Some people are trouble. You can't help them, but they can harm you. Why are you associating with them? For literary purposes? Because you foolishly overestimate your healing powers?  Christ hung out with sinners. But he had special powers, to put it mildly.

On the basis of the slim facts presented, I say that my reader ought to break off contact with his drunkard 'friend.' Break off a 20-year friendship? Well, was it a friendship of affinity or a friendship of propinquity?  I won't pause to explain what I mean; you should be able to catch my meaning.  If there was a deep bond, and the guy hit hard times and sought solace in the bottle, then that puts a different complexion on things. Maybe my reader should try to help his friend.  There is a difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic: every (unreformed) alky is a heavy drinker but not conversely.  If the friend is an alky, it would probably be best to deep-six him, even if he is 'on the wagon.' It's a good bet he will fall off.  As a general rule, people do not change. WYSIWYG! And will continue to get.  Schopenhauer spoke of the immutability of character, with only slight exaggeration. The italicized rule is a very important bit of life wisdom. For example, don't marry someone with the thought that you will change him or her. That way lies misery. To my reader, I say: There is no point in wasting time with some guy whose whole life is dominated by the project of climbing out of a hole he  himself freely dug with a cocktail glass. The same goes for those who dig their holes and graves with fork and spoon or syringe.

But again, it all depends.  Suppose the guy is not an alky. Is my reader single or married? If married, does he have children? Would you want your wife and children to come into contact with a drunkard? Presumably not.

And if you associate with drunks, are you not giving tacit moral approval to their immoral behavior? It is not morally wrong to to have a drink, but it is morally wrong to get drunk, even if you harm no one but yourself. I'll spare you the argument, but invite you think about it.  

My reader mentions Stoicism. Here is a brief summary of the Stoic attitude:

There are things that are in our power, and things that are not. The flood that sweeps away my house is not in my power; but my response to the flood is. I can make myself miserable by blaming other people, from the president on down; or I can limit my suffering by taking control of my own mind. Your insulting me is not in my power; but whether or not I let it affect me is in my power.

The Stoics had an important insight into the mind's power to regulate itself. When you really understand their point it can come as a revelation. I was once thinking of a dead relative and how he had wronged me. I began to succumb to negative thoughts, but caught myself and suddenly realized that I am doing it. I saw that I was allowing the negative thoughts to arise and that I had the power to blot them out. The incident was years in the past, and the malefactor was long dead. So the mental disturbance was my own creation. My sudden realization of this — aided no doubt by my reading of Stoic and other wisdom literature — caused the disturbance to vanish.

The Stoics discerned the mind's power to regulate itself and master its thoughts, rather than be mastered by them. They saw that, within certain limits, we create our own reality. Within limits, we can make ourselves miserable and we can make ourselves happy. There is an inner citadel into which one can retreat, and where a very real peace can be enjoyed — assuming that one is willing to practice the Stoic precepts rather than merely read about them.

Stoic calm is not that hard to maintain as long as one avoids the near occasion of unnecessary vexation.  Here then is a further reason for my reader to break with his 'friend.'

Coming back to the question of self-knowledge, I recommend that my reader consult Karen Horney (pronounced like horn-eye, not like whore-knee). I don't know if she is much read these days but her books are well-written and full of insight. Here is a taste:

Interpersonal Strategies of Defense

According to Horney, people try to cope with their basic anxiety by adopting a compliant or self-effacing solution and moving toward people, by adopting an aggressive or expansive solution and moving against people, or by becoming detached or resigned and moving away from people. Healthy people move appropriately and flexibly in all three directions, but in neurotic development these moves become compulsive and indiscriminate. Each solution involves a constellation of behavior patterns and personality traits, a conception of justice, and a set of beliefs about human nature, human values, and the human condition. Each also involves a "deal" or bargain with fate in which obedience to the dictates of that solution is supposed to be rewarded.

I would only add that while healthy people are able to behave in all three ways (compliant, expansive, detached) as circumstances require, one can be psychologically healthy and favor one of the interpersonal strategies over the other two. Those of us who resonate to the Stoic teaching are most likely to favor the detachment strategy and move away from people when their bad behavior erupts, by either minimizing one's contact with them, or cutting them off entirely.  I have done both. Pre-emptive measures are also to be considered. We were invited to Christmas dinner and to a New Year's Eve party, get-togethers in both cases organized by my wife's friends. I told the wife  I would attend one event but not both.  I thereby limited the threat to my apatheia and ataraxia.

Finally, having just revealed myself as an introvert and an advocate of detachment (better: non-attachment), I now say to my reader that he should consider who is now giving him advice and factor that in when considering how much of it he should take.

Post-finally, here is a short video clip from Tombstone in which the bad behavior of Johnny Ringo is excused by Curly Bill on the ground that it is the booze in Johnny that is talking.  The relevance to my reader's problem is obvious.